Knowledge and experience are touted as both the necessary and sufficient conditions to make a person an expert. This paper attempts to investigate this issue in the context of software development by studying software developer’s expertise based on their activity and experience on GitHub and Stack Overflow platforms. We study how developers themselves define the notion of an “expert”, as well as why or why not developers contribute to online collaborative platforms. We conducted an exploratory survey with 73 software developers and applied a mixed methods approach to analyze the survey results. The results provided deeper insights into how an expert in the field could be defined. Further, the study provides a better understanding of the underlying factors that drive developers to contribute to GitHub and Stack Overflow, and the challenges they face when participating on either platform. The quantitative analysis showed that JavaScript remains a popular language, while knowledge and experience are the key factors driving expertise. On the other hand, qualitative analysis showed that soft skills such as effective and clear communication, analytical thinking are key factors defining an expert. We found that both knowledge and experience are only necessary but not sufficient conditions for a developer to become an expert, and an expert would necessarily have to possess adequate soft skills. Lastly, an expert’s contribution to GitHub seems to be driven by personal factors, while contribution to Stack Overflow is motivated more by professional drivers (i.e., skills and expertise). Moreover, developers seem to prefer contributing to GitHub as they face greater challenges while contributing to Stack Overflow.
| Files | Description |
|---|---|
| AnonymizedSurveyQuotes.xlsx | Contains the anonymized responses from the 41 survey respondents. |
| SurveyQuestions.pdf | Open-ended and closed-ended question sent to common GH and SO active users. |
| TechnicalReport.pdf | Technical report prepared with all the themes that were emerged out of card sorting exercise. |
Vadlamani, Sri Lakshmi and Olga Baysal. “Studying Software Developer Expertise and Contributions in Stack Overflow and GitHub”. In Proceedings of the 36th IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME 2020), September 27-October 03, 2020, Adelaide, Australia.